EntitySpaces 2009 Q1 is all about streamlining our code generation process.  We are creating our own code generation engine, just as we created our own metadata engine for the ES2008 release. Having our own code generation engine will allow us to break our reliance on third party code generators and eliminate needless complexities thereby improving usability for our customers. This will allow us to have our own project files of pre recorded template settings for playback. Additionally, we will provide a totally new approach for declaring template user interfaces. All of these enhancements focus on one of our main goals for EntitySpaces 2009 Q1 … simplification of the code generation process. However, there are more enhancements.

Visual Studio 2008 users will be pleased to know that we will provide a Visual Studio 2008 Shell version with ES2009. The Visual Studio Shell is part of the new Visual Studio Extensibility (VSE) system. Visual Studio 2008 users will never need to leave Visual Studio when using EntitySpaces. We will also provide a very nice command line application that will allow you to regenerate your code during your build processes’, including continuous integration builds. The command line application will be able to take code generation project files on the command line as arguments. If you are feeling left out because you do not use Visual Studio 2008, or are using one of the Express versions, you are not going to be left behind. We will also provide a stand-alone Windows Forms application to handle template execution and code generation. The stand alone Windows form application may be written so that it will run under Mono as well (still in debate).

Furthermore, we will be adding support for SQLite, which we feel is important in order to open even more mobile markets for our customers. We have very good Windows .NET Compact Framework support. We also plan to add support for IBM’s DB2 database engine. Our SQLite support will most likely come before the IBM DB2 support. Finally, we will be adding a Domain Modeler that will allow users to completely customize their domain modal. However, EntitySpaces will not require any XML files, nor use reflection for this purpose as other ORM systems often use.

This is an aggressive feature set. Not all of the features mentioned above will be available in the ES2009 Q1 release. Not covered in this post are changes planned for the architecture itself, those will follow in another post. Our plan is to have an ES2009 beta out near the end of 2008.

From mobile devices to large scale enterprise solutions in need of serious transaction support, EntitySpaces can meet your needs. Whether you’re writing an ASP.NET application with medium trust requirements, a Mono application, or a Windows.Forms application, the EntitySpaces architecture is there for you. EntitySpaces is provider independent, which means that you can run the same binary code against any of the supported databases. EntitySpaces is available in both C# and VB.NET. EntitySpaces uses no reflection, no XML files, and sports a tiny foot print of less than 200k. Pound for pound, EntitySpaces is one tough, dependable .NET architecture.

The EntitySpaces Team
--

EntitySpaces LLC
Persistence Layer and Business Objects for Microsoft .NET
http://www.entityspaces.net

EntitySpaces 2008 was originally released on June 23rd and it has proven to be very solid, as have our past releases. We decided to put out a maintenance release to make some minor tweaks we have made available. We have also upgraded the ASPX Admin Suite to run under ES2008. The ASPX Admin suite is only available under MyGeneration as the UI technique it uses is not compatible with CodeSmith. You can install this release right over the top of your current ES2008 installation.

• Upgraded our C# and VB.NET Web ASPX Admin Grid templates for ES2008 (MyGeneration Only).
• Fixed Oracle SEQ double-quotes in MyGeneration VB Metadata and MetadataMap templates.
• Add support for Oracle FLOAT data type.
• We no longer use the deprecated Oracle Precision and Scale in parameters for NUMERIC data types.
• Fixed a casting issue for esDataSource TotalRowCount with MySQL and Oracle.
• Add Property Changed Notification to all four hierarchical properties.
• Fixed exception handling in FillDataTable and FillDataSet for all providers.
• Updated template UI and "Getting Started" PDFs to state framework requirements for LinqToSql(3.5) and WCF(3.0) options.

The Trial version is available as well for 2008.1.0811.

From mobile devices to large scale enterprise solutions in need of serious transaction support, EntitySpaces can meet your needs. Whether you’re writing an ASP.NET application with medium trust requirements, a Mono application, or a Windows.Forms application, the EntitySpaces architecture is there for you. EntitySpaces is provider independent, which means that you can run the same binary code against any of the supported databases. EntitySpaces is available in both C# and VB.NET. EntitySpaces uses no reflection, no XML files, and sports a tiny foot print of less than 200k. Pound for pound, EntitySpaces is one tough, dependable .NET architecture.

The EntitySpaces Team
--

EntitySpaces LLC
Persistence Layer and Business Objects for Microsoft .NET
http://www.entityspaces.net

"EntitySpaces is an easy-to-use, high-performing .NET Object Relational Mapping (ORM) tool. If your organization is evaluating ORM tools, I would recommend that you add EntitySpaces to your list."   -- Vijay P. Mehta

While this book isn't specifically about EntitySpaces we do get some kinds words from it's author in the section of the book that does takes a look at EntitySpaces.

Author Information

Vijay P. Mehta has been working as a software engineer and architect for the last 12 years. Starting off in the VC++/ATL, MFC, Win32, and VB6 worlds, Vijay later moved on to Java and .Net development. With his current focus on C# and .Net, Vijay holds a number of Microsoft certifications and has written a number of articles on .Net and Microsoft–focused development. Currently working as an Architect for a financial services software company in Indianapolis, Vijay spends the bulk of his time designing and implementing large, cutting-edge software systems.

For more information see Pro LINQ Object Relational Mapping in C# 2008

EntitySpaces LLC
Persistence Layer and Business Objects for Microsoft .NET
http://www.entityspaces.net

Before we begin we want to let you know that you should uninstall any prior ES2008 beta's including the release candidate before installing the official release. The official release is version number 2008.1.0623.0 (yyyy.major.mmdd.minor) and passes all of our regressions tests. We were also able to sneak in fixes and enhancements such as support for the new "rowversion" data type in Microsoft SQL Server CE which providers support for concurrency checking, and other fixes as well. The installer also now installs two versions of our .CHM based help system. We still ship the full blown help system but we also provide a new scaled down "simple" version which you will find on your menu after installing. This simple version should prove very useful if you are just getting started with EntitySpaces. 

New Features and Bug Fixes

• Support for both MyGeneration and CodeSmith.
• LINQ Support for our SQL Server and SQL Server CE Desktop providers.
  • EntitySpaces 2008 - LINQ to SQL in Next Beta
  • EntitySpaces 2008 - LINQ to SQL in Next Beta (Part 2)
• Added "Casting" Support
• Added Subquery Support
  • EntitySpaces 2008 - Dynamic SubQuery Showcase
  • EntitySpaces 2008 Adds Subqueries
• Support for the SQL Server 2005 NEWSEQUENTIALID() Function.
• Support for the new SQL Server 2008 Datatypes.
• Added Query.SelectAllExcept() - Great for excluding large blob type columns when you don't really need them.
• Added PostgreSQL Guid support (see EntitySpaces.Npgsql2Provider.dll below).
• Fixed obj.Query.Where(new esWhereItem(esParenthesis.Close)) adds extra default Conjunction.
       http://community.entityspaces.net/forums/thread/7491.aspx
       http://community.entityspaces.net/forums/thread/7620.aspx
• Added the ability to un-hook a Query from a collection.
       http://community.entityspaces.net/forums/thread/8325.aspx
• Leaving esDataSource.TotalRowCount set to -1 it will cause it to calculate it for you (no need for a second query).
• Better exception handling. All low level database exceptions should bubble up to the application code. No more "Object reference not set" errors.
• The installer also ships full source for the EntitySpaces.MetadataEngine.dll plugins for both Sql Server CE and VistaDB so you can recompile these if you need to use different versions.
• All assemblies have new strong name keys and the source code does not come with the .SNK files, if you need to recompile the source code you will need to generate your own EntitySpaces.snk files.
• Generating code with "Generate Single File" set to false should no longer have any errors.
• Fixed Query.OP() LIKE/NOT LIKE for public use.
• Fixed parameter direction in Oracle delete stored procedures.
• Fixed property settor when INotify and Hierarchical are both checked
  • http://community.entityspaces.net/forums/thread/8951.aspx
• Properties that are not brought back by queries no longer throw exceptions, they simply return null if accessed. This is very nice for our proxies as you no longer have to return all columns for the proxies to work properly.
• Many other minor fixes and enhancements were made.
  

Assemblies

The Standard Assemblies for .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5

The Compact Framework Assemblies for .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5

There is a special version of the EntitySpaces.Core.dll in the "Web" subfolder that allows for better binding in ASP.NET scenarios when extra columns are brought back by joins and by other means. This should eliminate the need to use LowLevelBind().

Both our .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5 EntitySpaces.SqlServerCeProvider.CF.dll's are bound to the 3.5.0.0 version of System.Data.SqlServerCe.dll. If you need to redirect the bindings you can do so, see this post. Both our .NET 3.5 versions of EntitySpaces.SqlClientProvider.dll and EntitySpaces.SqlServerCeProvider.dll (Desktop) have support for LINQ.

From mobile devices to large scale enterprise solutions in need of serious transaction support, EntitySpaces can meet your needs. Whether you’re writing an ASP.NET application with medium trust requirements, a Mono application, or a Windows.Forms application, the EntitySpaces architecture is there for you. EntitySpaces is provider independent, which means that you can run the same binary code against any of the supported databases. EntitySpaces is available in both C# and VB.NET. EntitySpaces uses no reflection, no XML files, and sports a tiny foot print of less than 200k. Pound for pound, EntitySpaces is one tough, dependable .NET architecture.

The EntitySpaces Team
--

EntitySpaces LLC
Persistence Layer and Business Objects for Microsoft .NET
http://www.entityspaces.net

We've added support for CodeSmith and added many big new features including LINQ Support, subquery support, casting support, SQL 2008 support, NewSequentialID support, PostgreSQL Guid support, and just a ton of enhancements and fixes. We also now have a Microsoft SQL Server CE desktop provider as well as the Compact Framework provider. We didn't get everything done on the roadmap that we wanted to but we are well positioned for the future. We need to save some stuff for the official announcement so this is just a short and sweet post to let you know the official version "2008.1.0623.0".

Below are a few blog posts that speak to some of the new features coming in ES2008. And know for sure, we need you to run with our release candidate this week. So help us if you can.

EntitySpaces 2008 - LINQ to SQL in Next Beta

EntitySpaces 2008 - LINQ to SQL in Next Beta (Part 2)

EntitySpaces 2008 "Cast" Support

EntitySpaces 2008 - Dynamic SubQuery Showcase

EntitySpaces 2008 Adds Subqueries

From mobile devices to large scale enterprise solutions in need of serious transaction support, EntitySpaces can meet your needs. Whether you’re writing an ASP.NET application with medium trust requirements, a Mono application, or a Windows.Forms application, the EntitySpaces architecture is there for you. EntitySpaces is provider independent, which means that you can run the same binary code against any of the supported databases. EntitySpaces is available in both C# and VB.NET. EntitySpaces uses no reflection, no XML files, and sports a tiny foot print of less than 200k. Pound for pound, EntitySpaces is one tough, dependable .NET architecture.

The EntitySpaces Team
--

EntitySpaces LLC
Persistence Layer and Business Objects for Microsoft .NET
http://www.entityspaces.net

We thought we would bring this blog post written by King Wilder to your attention. King Wilder, is an ASP.NET developer who runs and owns a small web hosting company called Gizmo Beach. The article is about an ASP.NET MVC application that King ported to use EntitySpaces as the data access layer, or model. Here's a brief snippet from the article.

ENTITY SPACES

Ok a brief word about Entity Spaces.  It is a really cool ORM tool but much more than that.  It reads your database and builds entity classes.  Now you might say that there are many tools that do that like NHibernate, SubSonic, etc., and you would be correct.  EntitySpaces actually costs money where SubSonic is free.  But I was using SubSonic before I trialed Entity Spaces.  After about a half a day playing with it, I purchased it and I'm going on my second year (2008) using it and I couldn't be happier.  Go to their web site to find out more.  But this article isn't about EntitySpaces, it's about building an ASP.NET MVC application without using Linq.

See the rest of the blog post HERE ...

The EntitySpaces 2008 Release Candidate is available now. Both the Developer and Trial Versions are available. Not all of the items on the roadmap are going to make the 1st ES2008 release. Those items listed on the roadmap not shown in red will be included in a follow on maintenance release. We are probably looking at less than two weeks before the official release so we encourage you to upgrade and try it out to make sure that there are no fixes that you need.

Here is a short list of fixes and enhancements included in the Release Candidate:

• esDataSource will automatically fetch the TotalRowCount if you do not set it
• Added LINQ support too (optional template option)
• Added source code for VistaDB and SqlCe MetadataEngine plugins to installer
• Fixed some Casting issues
• Fixed DatePart sub-operator for Oracle
• Fixed CodeSmith generation error for SqlCe
• Fixed CodeSmith generating un-compileable code for Oracle sequences
• Fixed ordering issue with paging for Oracle
• PostgreSQL Guid Support

From mobile devices to large scale enterprise solutions in need of serious transaction support, EntitySpaces can meet your needs. Whether you’re writing an ASP.NET application with medium trust requirements, a Mono application, or a Windows.Forms application, the EntitySpaces architecture is there for you. EntitySpaces is provider independent, which means that you can run the same binary code against any of the supported databases. EntitySpaces is available in both C# and VB.NET. EntitySpaces uses no reflection, no XML files, and sports a tiny foot print of less than 200k. Pound for pound, EntitySpaces is one tough, dependable .NET architecture.

The EntitySpaces Team
--

EntitySpaces LLC
Persistence Layer and Business Objects for Microsoft .NET
http://www.entityspaces.net

Okay, before you rail against the machine we are aware of the BINARY(16) thing-a-ma-joppy being implemented in the MySQL Connector/Net provider (5.2.2.0 version) but surely this is not the preferred method and is only a short term solution until MySQL 6.0 is released?  However, this post seems to indicate that the core MySQL database engine guys are perfectly happy not having a real Guid data type in the year 2008. Correct me if I'm wrong please ...

Basically, the MySQL Connector/Net (5.2.2.0) provider treats BINARY(16) columns as Guids, though there is not real Guid (uniqueidentifier in Microsoft SQL) data type. However, it's not transparent, there are special read and write methods for it. If you're a MySQL fan let the folks over at MySQL know that you want a true data type for Guids and not an imposter. We appreciate the hard work the MySQL Connector/Net team is doing. After all, MySQL doesn't have a Guid type yet so they are doing what they can. However, we would rather see them lobby the core database engine team for a true Guid column type. How about you?

Fans of MySQL unite, saddle up your dolphins and let MySQL know you want a true Guid datatype in MySQL 6.0.

I have always built architectures on top of ADO.NET DataTables, they're fast (yes), flexible, and the power it provides is really pretty good. Additionally, as new features are added to ADO.NET they can then be easily absorbed. We were able to add LINQ to SQL to EntitySpaces by simply turning a LINQ query into an ADO.NET DataTable. Once we exchange the LINQ query for an ADO.NET DataTable the EntitySpaces architecture functions as normal since its underlying data structure is a DataTable. Pretty sweet. Here's a nice little trick in case you are not aware of it.

DataContext context = new DataContext("User ID=sa;Initial Catalog=ForeignKeyTest;Data Source=localhost;");

var linqQuery = context.GetTable<Employee>().Where(s => s.LastName != "Griffin")
    .OrderBy(s => s.LastName);

SqlCommand cmd = context.GetCommand(linqQuery) as SqlCommand;

DataTable dataTable = new DataTable();
SqlDataAdapter adapter = new SqlDataAdapter(cmd);
adapter.Fill(dataTable);

There you have it. A DataTable obtained from a LINQ query, easy as pie.  You can simply ask the DataContext for a Command object and then use the Command object in combination with a DataAdapter to fill a DataTable. This is exactly what EntitySpaces 2008 does under the covers. This is an excellent way for architectures to leverage the power of LINQ to SQL.

From mobile devices to large scale enterprise solutions in need of serious transaction support, EntitySpaces can meet your needs. Whether you’re writing an ASP.NET application with medium trust requirements, a Mono application, or a Windows.Forms application, the EntitySpaces architecture is there for you. EntitySpaces is provider independent, which means that you can run the same binary code against any of the supported databases. EntitySpaces is available in both C# and VB.NET. EntitySpaces uses no reflection, no XML files, and sports a tiny foot print of less than 200k. Pound for pound, EntitySpaces is one tough, dependable .NET architecture.

The EntitySpaces Team
--

EntitySpaces LLC
Persistence Layer and Business Objects for Microsoft .NET
http://www.entityspaces.net